Toomey: Less regulations, better policies will energize U.S. economy
Senator Pat Toomey, R-Pa., makes a point during his remarks Wednesday at Consol Energy’s Gas Operations Training Academy in Amwell Township.
Senator Pat Toomey, R-Pa., right, takes a tour of Consol Energy’s Gas Operations Training Academy with company officials prior to his remarks Wednesday.
U.S. Senator Pat Toomey on Wednesday said the country needs to consider policy differences between Republican and Democratic candidates if it wants to see economic growth greater than it’s been over the past several years.
Speaking before about 150 employees at CONSOL Energy Inc.’s Gas Operations Training Academy in Amwell Township, Toomey, R-Pa., said companies, especially those in the energy industry, need to work with fewer onerous regulations if America is to achieve something above the sub-2 percent economic growth of the last few years.
“We’ve been living through the weakest recovery after a serious recession in the history of the country since the Great Depression itself. We’ve never before in any of our lifetimes had a bad recession and not come roaring back, it’s never happened before,” he said.
“I think the reason is clear,” Toomey said. “We’ve been living through really badly flawed policy. We’ve had massive tax increases, we’ve had unbelievably new deficits, we have doubled the nation’s debt and we’ve inflicted an avalanche of new regulations on the entire economy up and down every industry.”
Toomey said some of his opponents refer to the current economic condition as “secular stagnation,” adding, “I call that copping out.
“We should have 4 percent economic growth, we should be creating millions of jobs and we should be creating so many opportunities and upward pressure on wages and a rising standard of living. That’s what’s normal in the United States of America.”
According to Toomey, achieving strong growth won’t happen “as long as we continue thinking that the government is the answer to all our questions and if we just have another government program and more regulations and more taxes and more deficits that we’re somehow are going to get out of this mess.”
In contrasting himself and his opponent, Democrat candidate Katie McGinty, Toomey said, “Her whole strategy is to just double down on everything that’s been going on in these last few years: double down on the Obama agenda, Obamacare and higher taxes.”
According to Toomey, the view on energy represents the biggest contrast between him and McGinty.
“I brag about our natural gas industry back with my colleagues back in Washington,” he said, noting that Pennsylvania is now second in natural gas production only to Texas and recently surpassed Norway in that category.
“Who would have thought this 10 years ago? It’s us, it’s Pennsylvania. This is the biggest thing to happen to us in 100 years.”
It isn’t just good news for those working in the industry, he said but also for consumers. “We’ve got the lowest cost gas in the world,” he said.
The other benefit to Pennsylvania’s abundant natural gas output, he added, is the Shell cracker facility the company will begin constructing next year in Beaver County.
“It’s going to create thousands of jobs and it’s going to lead to hundreds of additional companies that want to be close to it, all because of what you’re taking out of the ground.
“It’s a big deal for Pennsylvania’s economy, it’s a big deal for America’s economy and a big deal geopolitically” because the U.S. will export some of the product to countries, enabling its allies to avoid purchasing the fuel “from some really unsavory characters.”
While stating that the industry has done a good job in working with best practices and complying with regulatory standards set by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Toomey said McGinty wants to give the federal Environmental Protection Agency the power to have an “additional and entire regulatory overlay above and beyond and in addition to everything you do, and quite possibly in contradiction to everything you do.”
Toomey said the answer to the question of why the Democrats pursue the strategy he described came from Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“She said it is so they can regulate this activity out of existence. They’re doing it to coal … and natural gas is next, and we can’t let that happen.
“This is too important to Pennsylvania, to our country, it is too important to our prosperity. We’ve just got to get our policy right.”
Toomey, who received an endorsement Wednesday from the “Secure Energy for America Political Action Committee,” said following his remarks he hasn’t committed to supporting Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“Hillary Clinton is completely unacceptable to me, but I’ve had a lot of reservations about Donald Trump. I’ve not endorsed him; I have hoped to be persuaded. I am not yet persuaded.”